‘It wouldn’t work,’ she told him flatly.
‘You can’t say that until you try it,’ Dominic insisted grimly. ‘And you owe it to yourself to.’
Annie turned away from him, unable to make any response, knowing that what he said was true and remembering, too, how she had told him herself she would do anything to remember.
‘Very well,’ she agreed reluctantly. ‘But I don’t have to stay here…’
‘Yes, you do,’ Dominic corrected her. ‘After all, you lived here with me.’
‘Before we were married?’ she demanded, her voice betraying her shock.
‘Yes,’ Dominic told her laconically. ‘After all, we were lovers, and there was no reason why we should have lived apart.’
No reason, perhaps, but for some reason Annie felt shocked by his revelation.
‘Look,’ Dominic was telling her, ‘you and I had two months together. All I’m asking is that you give me that time now, Annie. Two months, that’s all. If, at the end of that time, you’re no closer to remembering anything then I’ll concede defeat and—’
‘And we’ll be divorced,’ Annie interrupted him flatly.
‘Yes,’ he agreed in an equally emotionless voice.
Annie knew that she could have pointed out that since they intended to divorce anyway there seemed little point in delaying matters without any logical reason for doing so. But of course there was a reason, and she knew perfectly well what it was. Dominic’s male pride was still smarting because she had left him. He wanted an explanation, a reason, and he was determined that she was going to provide him with one.
Her own reasons for wishing to remember her past were far more complex. She had dreamed about Dominic as her lover; her body remembered him as its lover. Before he had told her the truth about their marriage, their shared past, she had craved a closeness with him so strong that he had somehow broken through the locked doors of her memory. So why had she left him? Her inability to remember made her feel that a piece of herself was missing, threatening to resurrect all the insecurity she had known as an abandoned child. Only this time she was the one who had done the abandoning—why? She had to find out…
‘You’re doing what?’ Helena demanded when Annie telephoned her to tell her what they were going to do.
‘Dominic says that until I’ve remembered the past and him properly neither of us will be able to move our lives on,’ Annie explained.
‘Well, yes, I suppose he does have a point,’ Helena acknowledged. ‘And if it’s what you want to do…’
The urge to tell her friend that it was the last thing she wanted to do was immensely strong, but somehow Annie resisted it. Dominic was determined to have his own way and she suspected that not even Helena would be able to stop him. She was trying to tell herself that enduring the next two months was going to be a bit like enduring the uncomfortable treatments she had had to go through in hospital. The end result would be worth the pain.
‘Well, I have to admit that I’m glad you’re not living on your own. You’re facing a very traumatic time, Annie—and, stubbornly independent though you are, and much as I understand how you feel, this isn’t a good time for you to be on your own.
‘I take it that a divorce is going to be put on hold for the time being?’ Helena continued.
‘For the time being,’ Annie agreed shakily. ‘It’s just a temporary delay, that’s all.’
Just a temporary delay. Just two months’ delay. But no less than three days into it Annie was beginning to bitterly regret allowing Dominic to persuade her to agree to his plan.
Both Helena and Dominic were insisting that she was still not fully recovered and must not overdo things, and Annie was beginning to feel that time was hanging too heavily on her hands. Dominic, though, had been so busy that she had barely seen him—a fact for which she ought to be thankful, she knew, but somehow she wasn’t. She felt tired and headachy, her lethargy caused, she knew, as much by the fact that she was not sleeping properly as much as anything else. She was reluctant to allow herself to go into a deep, restful sleep because she was so afraid she might dream about Dominic.
Dominic!
Living here with him was putting her under immense strain, and not just because of their shared past.
Just thinking about him made her body tense, a tiny convulsive shudder gripping her. She was far too physically aware of him. Far too physically vulnerable to him. There, she had forced herself to admit what she had been fighting so hard to hide from and deny these last few days. She had brought out into the open her own fear. Physically, she was…she found…she wanted…Closing her eyes, Annie willed herself to bring her chaotic thoughts and feelings to order. It was warm out here in the garden, with the sun beating down on her closed eyelids. Dominic was at work and she was on her own. A bee buzzed busily in the roses nearby.
The roses. She could smell their scent. A prickle of sensation ran through her body. Behind her closed eyelids she could see zig-zagging confusing images: roses flushed with the sun and heavily petalled, their scent filling her nostrils, but still unable to eliminate the sensually thrilling slightly musky scent of the man beside her. She could see his hand, his fingers as he reached for one of the roses.
‘No, don’t pick it,’ she whispered to him. ‘It will live longer out here…’
‘You’re such a baby…’
The warm indulgent sound of his voice echoed against her ears like the sound of the sea heard in a shell, audible, recognisable, but somehow at a distance.
She could feel his breath against her skin, her mouth, as he leaned closer to her, and she held her own breath, knowing he was going to kiss her, her stomach muscles tensing on a shock-surge of excitement and anticipation.
His mouth feathered delicately against hers, the touch of his lips as light and delicate as the warm air against the roses, but she still quivered in mute delight. She could feel his hands moving up her arms, cupping the balls of her shoulders. Instinctively she moved closer to him whilst his tongue probed the softly closed line of her lips, as busily determined to taste her sweetness as the bee seeking the roses’ honeyed pollen-dusted centre.
Her whole body quivered, her response mute no longer as she gave a soft moan of delirious pleasure.
‘Dominic…’
Abruptly Annie opened her eyes. Where she had been pleasantly warm and relaxed she was now icily cold and tense, and yet despite the shivers shuddering through her she could feel sweat beading her forehead.
What was happening to her? Was she going mad, or was what she had just experienced a flashback to reality, the sharply jagged edge of a memory forcing its way into her conscious awareness?
Had Dominic once kissed her here, in this secluded rose garden?
‘Annie?’
When she heard Dominic’s voice she tried to compose herself, but as he looked at her and she saw his expression she knew she had not succeeded.
‘What is it? What’s wrong?’ he demanded sharply as he reached her.
He made an imposing figure, standing there in his office suit and a crisp white shirt, looking both formidable and yet somehow virilely male at the same time. Or was it her own memories that w
ere making her see him like that? Her memories…Automatically Annie closed her eyes.
‘I…I think I may just have remembered something,’ she heard herself admitting shakily.
Why had she said that? Why had she said anything? But it was too late now to regret her impulsiveness. Dominic was next to her, one hand reaching out to hold her arm as he exclaimed, ‘You have? What? Tell me…’
‘It was nothing…not really,’ Annie started to deny it, reluctant now to describe to him the very sensual and intimate nature of her experience.
‘You’re lying,’ Dominic challenged her. ‘Tell me, Annie. I have a right to know.’
Annie swallowed. She was beginning to feel slightly giddy and disorientated—because of the heat or because of what had happened? She could feel herself beginning to tremble.
‘I’m sorry,’ she heard Dominic apologise unexpectedly as he felt her body tremor beneath his touch. ‘I didn’t mean to sound so aggressive.’
His apology melted Annie’s resistance. Hesitantly she tried to tell him what had happened, beginning, ‘It was the roses…I could smell them, and then suddenly…’ She stopped and looked at him, unaware of the apprehension and the appeal Dominic could see so clearly in her eyes.
‘Was there ever a time…?’ she began uncertainly. ‘Did we…?’
Dominic knew immediately what she was trying to ask.
‘You loved this part of the garden,’ he told her quietly. ‘You often used to come here and…’ He paused and looked away from her. ‘I know how difficult and painful this must be for you, Annie,’ he told her, in a much less controlled tone of voice. ‘But unlike you I do have my memories of our time together and…’
He stopped, his hand dropping away from her arm. Oddly Annie discovered that she missed its warmth. Awkwardly she raised her own hand, without realising what she was doing, her eyes widening as Dominic looked at it and then reached out and clasped it with his, entwining his fingers with hers and keeping his gaze on their entwined clasped hands as he continued.